Originally posted on the Huffington Post
Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) listens during a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Rep. Peter King’s decision to hold a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security on “radicalization in the American Muslim community” embraces the grand political tradition of demonizing a minority community in times of perceived national crisis for apparent personal advantage.
In 1919 an anarchist letter-bombing campaign prompted the Attorney General and aspirant President candidate Alexander Palmer to unleash a series of raids on predominantly Russian immigrant and labor groups that flouted due process and often resulted in what even J. Edgar Hoover admitted were “clear cases of brutality.” More than 500 Eastern European immigrants were summarily deported.
The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 led to the internment of 110,000 American citizens of Japanese origin in complete disregard for their constitutional protections. Many white Californians benefited materially as a result, especially in the farming community. FDR’s Assistant Secretary of War, John Jay McCloy, famously remarked at the time: “If it is a question of safety of the country, [or] the Constitution of the United States, why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”